What is your database version? Normally in 8i Oracle would allocate 5% of the shared_pool_size for shared_pool_reserved_size. If you want to allocate this paramter, take the 10% of shared_pool_size and allocate in. In 8i the min_alloc had been obsoleted as a result you wouldn't get to us this. Normally this would be your db_block_size.

Sam